Memories
by Jasmin 0583
Summary: It's parent teacher day at Hogwarts during the second year of both their sons and Harry and Draco walk the castle remembering places destroyed and people lost during the final battle.


The life of the dead lies in the memory of the living

Cicero

It was the second year for both Albus and Scorpius and Headmistress McGonagall had come up with a rather unorthodox idea that had never been done before. She had invited the second year student's parents for a parent-teacher-day. The parents would spend a full school day with their children, attending the classes, eating at the Great Hall and spending some time in their children's common rooms.

Of course it wasn't a mandatory event. Letters had been sent to all of the parents, expecting an answer. Almost all of the parents would be coming. Only a couple of the muggle families wouldn't be able to come. They couldn't get a day off work.

Classes for the second year would start late today so that the students and their families would have enough space in the Great Hall for breakfast. There would be four lessons before lunch would be served - once again a little later for the second year - and another two lessons after lunch before today's parent-teacher-day would come to a conclusion.

Harry was both excited and curious to see what a normal school day would mean nowadays. Since the final battle against Voldemort, he hadn't been to Hogwarts again. He had never seen the castle fully restored again. There was a certain fear lacing his curiosity. After all a lot of people had suffered and died the last time Harry had been at Hogwarts. He wondered what it would be like returning...

Ginny wasn't with him. She needed to take care of Lilly and therefore Harry had come alone. He had also decided to be here early. He wanted some time to himself to walk the castle, take a look around... remember. Classes for all other students would be starting at 8.30, which meant there was an hour in between the second year student breakfast and the start of their first lesson. Harry had already told Albus he wouldn't be there for breakfast and they would meet for Albus' first class which would be Potions today.

Harry had arrived Aparating right outside the gates leading to the school. He walked slowly, took in his surroundings and stopped in front of the tall entrance gates to the castle. Harry took a deep breath and closed his eyes. This was where it had happened. This was exactly the spot. This was where the final battle had ended. This was where Voldemort had died... Standing here again after such a long time, it still felt like it had just been a moment ago...

Harry swallowed hard and forced himself to open his eyes again. It was the past. History. It was all over now and it would never pain him again. Harry shook his head and started walking again, entering the castle. It was quiet along the halls and corridors of the castle when Harry arrived. Classes had already started. He took a deep breath, taking in the long forgotten but still familiar scent.

Harry walked past a window and had to stop yet again. This time it wasn't as easy to convince himself that everything that had happened during the final battle was in the past and would never haunt or hurt him again. Everything had been restored, the castle was shining in it's former glory but still this was a haunted place for Harry. This was the spot where Fred Weasley had died...

Harry closed his eyes yet again, took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm down, forcing the memories back down again. It was twenty years ago to the day and still it was like it happened just yesterday. The pain was still there, the anguish and the helplessness Harry had felt back then. It was like an old wound being reopened - and it bled and it hurt...

Footsteps on the marble floor brought Harry back to the here and now. He opened his eyes abruptly. He could hear the footsteps but he couldn't see anyone. Harry's face creased into a frown. The students and teachers were all in their respective classes and the second years were at breakfast... The castle was supposed to lay silent.

Curiosity got the better of him and Harry followed the footsteps. Harry was walking up a flight of stairs and he believed to see a shadow of black cloth out of the corner of his eye. He followed his instinct, followed the movement he believed to have seen and tried not to make a sound while he followed the footsteps that had gotten slower now.

The footsteps stopped abruptly right before Harry would have rounded the next corner. He would have been in plain sight of whoever it was lurking around the castle. A smile appeared on his lips. This was just like old times - sneaking around, being out in the corridors when he wasn't supposed to, letting his curiosity win the better of him instead of doing the reasonable thing...

He peeked around the corner and even though he hadn't even thought about what he had expected to see, the sight that presented itself to him still surprised him. The person he had been following and who now stood motionless in the middle of the corridor, was Draco Malfoy.

Of course Harry knew about little Scorpius and he could have expected his former school rival to be here today and spend the day with his son, but he had not expected him to wander the castle in very much the same restless way, Harry had done. He wondered what had drawn the other man to this particular place. There had been so much death and destruction back on that day twenty years ago but Harry couldn't place this particular spot to an event of the night of the final battle...

He watched intently as Malfoy took a hesitating step closer to the wall, stretched out a hand and let it move across the uneven surface of the ancient wall. Harry frowned. He wasn't sure what exactly it was he was witnessing here but unlike in old times, he didn't have that gut wrenching feeling that something horrible was about to happen.

For a quick second Harry thought about making his presence known, but he decided against it. Malfoy and him had never been friends, had never particularly liked each other and that was an understatement. Somehow Harry felt that Draco wouldn't react all to well to Harry's presence and the fact that he had been sneaking up on him. It seemed he wasn't the only one who had brought a couple of demons and haunting memories with him today.

*#*#*#*#*#*

The plan had not been set until the very moment Draco had stepped foot into the castle, realizing he had arrived way to early. He had debated looking for Scorpius and having breakfast with his son but he decided against it. They had agreed to meet for his first lesson and he certainly didn't plan on startling the little boy. Therefore he had quite an amount of spare time on his hands.

He could have visited some of his old teachers but realized that they would all be in class or at breakfast right now. Apart from that he wasn't really sure if any one of them would welcome him with open arms. He highly doubted it though. Unsure how to proceed, he had stepped up to one of the windows overlooking the yard in front of the main entrance and that was when the memories had returned.

Memories of death and devastation, of destruction, loss and mourning. He had shivered despite the long black cloak covering his form. It felt so fresh, so vivid, like it had just happened a minute ago. But he wasn't the foolish teenager he had been back then, so eager to please his father and deeply afraid of losing either one of his parents if he made a mistake. Mistakes he had made, but luckily enough for the whole family things had turned out in their favor...

They had been part of a few lucky ones. Friends and relatives of the family had ended up either dead or in prison. Of course it hadn't always been easy, leaving with the heritage of being an enemy in a barely concealed disguise to the one part and a traitor to the other part of the wizarding world. But still Draco could not deny that he was... happy.

Right now however that was a whole different matter. He had taken a step back from the window, but that didn't change the fact that the memories still lingered. So many decisions made wrong, so many lives lost, so many regrets still lingering. He hadn't thought about the past in a long time. He hadn't wanted to. But now that he was here he couldn't keep those long lost memories from resurfacing.

He stepped further back from the window, walking up the stairs and allowing his instinct to lead the way. Even after all this time and even though he dreaded going back, his feet still found the way without any difficulty. He found his way up to the third floor of the castle and stopped in the middle of one of the passageways. The corridor had been restored of course and it looked exactly like any other but he knew it was the right place.

He just stood there motionless unsure how to proceed. He wasn't sure he really wanted to see the place again, see the devastation. A life had been lost here twenty years ago, the life of someone he had once considered... a friend. At least that was what all the time having gone by had blurred the dead boy from the past into. Considering it carefully he had never truly been a friend. More like a minion of some kind. A hard smile appeared on Draco's face for just a second.

He gave up his posture in the middle of the corridor, stepping closer to the wall. He raised his hand, moving it ever so lightly across the wall in front of him. The rough surface scratched against the soft skin and Draco swallowed hard. He took a step back and closed his eyes. He could almost feel it - feel the intense heat, hear the roaring of the fire, smell the burning of paper of wood of flesh...

He forced himself to push the thought aside and focused on the task at hand. He hadn't done this in over a decade and the last time he did it had been for a horrible deed but he pushed all of that aside and tried to concentrate, tried to focus on the one thing he wanted to achieve right now. _Let me see the place of the Fiendfyre. Let me see where Vincent Crabbe died._

Slowly Draco opened his eyes. For a moment it seemed that nothing was happening. Nothing at all. But he was wrong. It was like the Room of Requirement needed a moment to remember what it felt like being summoned. Draco could very well imagine that the students coming here after them had no knowledge of this room. It had been utterly devastated by the spell Crabbe had used and certainly nobody had ever told them about him.

Draco lost his train of thought as the outlines of a door started to shine on the wall. He had summoned the Room of Requirement successfully but now he was no longer sure if he actually wanted to step foot into it. However he had no choice in the matter. The doors opened inwardly without him doing so much as approaching them.

Draco allowed himself a moment of weakness, took a deep breath and closed his eyes for just a moment before setting one foot in front of the other. The first thing that hit him was the smell. It smelled of cold ashes. Even after all these years since the spell had been cast, it still smelled like the fire had just died down a couple of minutes ago. He forced himself to open his eyes.

It was worse than he had imagined. A thick layer of dark gray ash covered the floor and left his footprints visible for everyone. Pieces of furniture piled up blackened by the fire, looking like rotten teeth in the skull of a dead man. Books, marred and rendered unreadable by the fire. Broken glass, melted mental. It was a whole variety of destruction staring him in the face. Broken, blackened, destroyed... Just like the castle had been. A last reminder of the battle once fought that was now a part of their history books.

He was almost sure he could smell the faint smell of burning flash and blinding panic threatened to engulf him as he imagined the blackened and mutilated corps of Vincent Crabbe to appear, accusing him of being at fault. It wasn't that far of the truth. After all he had made Crabbe and Goyle follow him to the Room of Requirement...

But nothing happened. No haunted ghost rushed at him, no mutilated corpse appeared behind a pile of ruined and marred furniture. Actually it was deathly quiet inside the room. Like a graveyard... and that was exactly what it was. Somebody had died here. Hopes and expectations had literally gone up in flames in this room. Draco let his gaze wander one last time before stepping back, leaving only his footprints in the ashes as proof that he had been here.

He stepped back through the door without turning around, keeping his eyes focused on the devastation in front of him. That was until the room's doors silently closed in front of him. The outline of the door slowly vanished back into the stone and soon there was only the wall right in front of him. Draco glanced down at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. Time to get to his son's first lesson. Time to go back to the present.

FIN


End file.
